


Remember

by Abi_Faye



Series: Timeless [3]
Category: The Chronicles
Genre: F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abi_Faye/pseuds/Abi_Faye





	1. Chapter 1

+++

"It's a different time, a different place, but it's the same old face. The one that seems eternally burned in his memory. And it's so hard to resist just telling her, but he can't, not yet. Theirs is a tenuous thing, and he doesn't want to scare her. So instead he asks her to dance and every time he spins her into his embrace she thinks she hears in his steps -- in his heartbeat resounding in the ear she pressed against his chest -- a simple promise that she doesn't (can't) understand. Yet.

"I'll make you fall in love with me again."

 


	2. {Breaking the Tether}

A man wasn't supposed to live this long. That's what he had been warned, two billion seconds ago. That's how time went by for him, one painful second at a time. Static and fluid simultaneously. He could recall every moment with absolute clarity, but any other time it passed as a blur.  
  
"I cannot send you back."  
  
The agony at hearing those words tore him further open inside. The memory hurt Callum even now, in this place of nothingness and all-encompassing presence. It meant everything to him, and yet it was a point, just a single point, at a single time, and yet nothing else felt more poignant.  
  
"Break the tether," the shaman advised Callum, his words whispering in his ears even still. Break the tether, let her go. This is not the way to live.  
  
"I'll wait for her," he had said determinedly then, and repeated it now, the echoes of his voice bouncing across mist and shadows with no corporeal form. They were in constant motion, and Callum was the fixed point.  
  
"There is no way to know when she'll reappear. It could be years, it could be centuries."  
  
"I don't care," he had said determinedly, his eyes red and swollen, tear tracks dried onto his cheeks and the stubble of a beard he had long forgotten to shave. How could he have when her fingers had caressed the coarse hair with a gentleness he had never known before her?  
  
The words echoed in his ears, all of the promises he had uttered, and the one promise he would never break. Her frail pale fingers that had once held him back with an absolute strength had dropped from his cheek trembling, and he held them in his own hand, kissing her fingertips as he was forced to watch the life drain out of her slowly. Every waking moment that wasn't spent at her side, he was out, trying to make deals with both God and the Devil to keep her alive.  
  
"It'll be painful," the shaman continued that one fateful day, warning him of the consequences of his actions. But Callum knew what he was risking; knew it the very moment he had bound his life to hers in a desperate attempt to keep her alive. He couldn't live without her.  
  
"I know."  
  
"You don't, Callum, but you will. Oh...you will."  
  
He had been no stranger to pain in his life, especially the pain brought on by loss and emptiness. He had felt the same pain, losing his family at such a young age, seeing friends die at treacherous hands, and finally her, Nova, taken from him as well.   
  
A part of him died with her that day with her. Sliced away from him, clawed out of his soul, and ripped away with her to a place he couldn't follow. He didn't know which loss had affected him more, hers or his, but the pain of it had brought him to his knees in a gut-wrenching scream.  
  
She died, but she would be reborn, he had made sure of it. The price was steep, but he had paid it and would continually pay it. Yet in his fervor, he had forgotten to do the same for him. This was the only way he could ever hope to see her again, and it wasn't a certainty, as he was told time and time again in the hours leading up to the ritual.  
  
"For her soul, it'll be instantaneous. She has died, she will be reborn. It is your soul that is in peril, for the realm above this one is not one a mortal man can navigate safely. You must find a connection, to this plane, this reality."  
  
"Her. It's her," he had said, incredulous as to why he needed to repeat it. The shaman however simply shook his head.  
  
"She is not of this reality any longer. Find someone, something, here. Cling to it and do not wander. It will keep you from fading. If you fade, you will not be able to return."  
  
It had been impossible at first, to cling to something on Earth. Everything changed, nothing was solid enough to hold his sway. Until he realized yes, there was. There was one, one man who had vowed to live forever, and who had betrayed him in his quest for power. The shaman had warned Callum that a man shouldn't live this long, so he tied himself to a man who was doing just that. Who lived on stolen time, time he took from his exanguinated victims, time he took from her. Callum would too survive, and come back. He'd come back for her, and to take his revenge on him, on Remington D'Grey.  
  
Until then, he was alone. Alone in a realm, he did not belong in. Everything passed through him, leaving an icy cold shiver in its place. He knew the sensation was entirely his own, a concoction of his mind, because he wasn't anything other than a conscious here. Floating in space and time, forced to endure the pain of loss continually. Every passing second, time passed by in seconds, he would feel the same pain he did when Nova had exhaled her last words from lips dry and cracked, tenfold.  
  
"The body can live without the soul, but the soul once pulled from the body will deteriorate if it's gone for too long."  
  
Thankfully, Callum was a stubborn man/conscious/ethereal ball of gas, or whichever form he was now. He only had to wait; wait and remember.  
  
"You're going to be okay lass, you're going to be just fine," Callum had whispered to her. Nova had chuckled as she hadn't been so bad at that time; she still had half her strength.  
  
"Liar," she teased him, "you never could lie to me...those big sad eyes."  
  
It wasn't only his memories he saw constantly, but glimpses of what happened around him, or maybe it was below him. The suffering, the pain, the loss of others, as well as the love and compassion. The world continued to go on, as it always would, but his world would not have.  
  
"There'll be no else, luv, no one. So don't spin that 'find someone else' nonsense."  
  
Nova smiled and whatever possible response she had for him was wiped away when he added to his previous statement, "Unless you want to get risky in the bedroom."  
  
"Cal," she had begun after a smirk, but sleep quickly took her. Once the color had started fading from cheeks, she hadn't been able to stay awake for too long. It wasn't the first time she had fallen asleep mid-sentence.  
  
"Remember me."  
  
How could he ever forget?  
  
The ritual that got him there had begun with drums. On the top of a hill, beneath the moonlight, Callum had stood alone. The beating of the drums had begun yards away and downhill. The rhythm remained constant and stagnant until the shaman and other members of the tribe reached him. When they surrounded him, chanting accompanied the drums. First the shaman, until one by one the others took up the chant, each time growing louder and faster.  
  
His heartbeat rose to follow the beat of the drums, exactly. The chill night air turned warm for him as his breathing grew ragged. His vision swirled around him, bringing about shadows that threatened to attack him. He remembered the shaman's words, all rushing around him at the same time. Don't stray, don't fade.  
  
His eyes had drifted to the night sky, and the million of stars that adorned it. How she loves the stars, Callum whispered as he closed his eyes, not yet used to (or rather utterly refraining from) using the past tense to refer to Nova.  
  
As soon as his eyes closed, the chanting quieted, the drums slowed their pace. For a moment, he thought he was among the clouds, among the very stars he had been admiring. For a moment he was at peace, but only for a single spare moment. Then, the drums and jarring voices cracked through the vision. He was on his knees again, not screaming and yet still out of breath. They moved around him, circling him like a flock of crows, as he struggled to keep his eyes open again. His heart beat painfully against his chest, trying to break out of his ribcage, matching the pounding of the drums loud in his ear. It grew to a pace incredibly rapid, until finally the chanting suddenly ceased.  
  
He had fallen backwards, looking up at the sky, the only sound was the drum, that beat slower again, the time between each note getting longer and longer. His heart followed the same rhythm still.  
  
Thump...  
  
Thump......  
  
Thump.........  
  
Callum never heard the last note. His eyes had closed once again and when they opened he had been here, in a place both deserted and crowded, both maddening and peaceful, both existent and imaginary. And here he had been, for two billion seconds.  
  
Until suddenly, he wasn't.  
  
Exiting the realm, limbo, had been more abrupt and violent than entering it. Where previously he could see and experience everything, darkness suddenly engulfed him. He struggled for breath as he felt the sensation of choking, even though somewhere he understood that he hadn't taken a breath of air in years.  
  
Like hanging off the edge of a cliff, Callum struggled to keep his hold on it, fearing that he was fading again, fearing he couldn't stay here any longer, that he would never be reunited.  
  
"Callum, we have to go!" An agitated voice pleaded urgently in his ear, pulling at his sleeve.  
  
"They'll be here any minute, we have to leave!"  
  
"I won't leave her!" He shouted, both in memory and right then, "I can't leave her."  
  
Nova shifted behind him and he ran to her side once more, asking in a trembling voice what was it when her lips had formed words he had been unable to hear. Never one to resist an opportunity to repeat herself to hear the sound of her own voice, even when her voice trembled, she turned to look at him better, cupping his cheek with her hand, brushing the coarse hair of stubble that reached the top of his neck.  
  
"Run," she sighed, "run, you clever...clever boy," she smiled, a tear pearling at the corner of her eye, "and remember."  
  
With a final exhale, her hand fell from his face.  
  
Closing his eyes, he loosened the grip, and fell backwards, continued to fall until  his vision was obscured with a blinding light.  
  
No, there were two of them.  
  
He awoke, naked on a ground made of what felt like a combination of cement and gravel. Callum felt like he had actually fallen from a cliff. Groaning, with tears in his eyes, he raised a hand to his chest, wincing and his breath shuddering and visible in the air. Suddenly the blinding lights turned off, and he heard a pair of panicked voices.  
  
"Oh God! Is he dead? I didn't see him!"  
  
"Call an ambulance!"  
  
"Why is he naked?!"  
  
Still groaning, unable to open his eyes for too long, he tried to stand but found it too painful. He felt someone draping some clothing material over him, and heard from right above.  
  
"Jay, honey, try to keep him awake, I'll check to see if there's a first aid kit in the car!"  
  
"Yes, we're at Burlington Road, pass mile marker 34, there's been an accident! Some boy just showed up in the middle of the road, he looks 15, maybe 16. He's still conscious for now."  
  
Opening his eyes, he was met with a mess of fiery red hair tumbling down, a young girl looking down at him, trying to speak to him.  
  
"Are you alright? Are you okay? What's your name?"  
  
"Wha...," Callum groaned and closed his eyes again momentarily, his limbs shaking.  
  
"Look at me, hey! Stay awake. My name is Jana, what's your name?"  
  
"Callum," he exhaled, his voice a lot more high-pitched than he remembered it being.  
  
"I'm..." A younger Callum exhaled and closed his eyes again, losing consciousness.


End file.
